Alex Berenson - The Midnight House

“Tell it to the guys who just got popped in San Francisco and L.A.”

With that they stood and looked over the Tidal Basin. Two helicopters flew low overhead, most likely headed for the White House, as an overweight jogger huffed slowly along the path that circled the pool.

“Not the most productive ten minutes we’ve ever spent,” Shafer said.

“What if—” Wells said.

“Just say it.”

“What if, let’s say, someone inside the agency or the Pentagon is embarrassed by what 673 did? Somebody high up? ”

“So, they want these guys taken out? One by one? Okay, go with it. Six-seven-three was torturing detainees. They were dumb enough to keep evidence, videos or photos. And some senior official was stupid enough to put his authorization in writing. He’s got a problem.”

“Big problem. The kind that puts him in jail.”

“Sure,” Shafer said. “But that’s a lot of stupid. And even so, the risk of taking them out is huge.”

“People have been known to do dumb things when they panic.”

“True. But play it the other way. What if Duto’s telling the truth and 673 found something huge? Proof the Kremlin is financing terrorism against us. Evidence that the French were paying bin Laden before nine-eleven.”

“Now someone’s decided that the information is too important to risk a leak. And so it’s time for 673 to go.”

“In the immortal words of Avon Barksdale, ‘They got to be got.’ ”

“Who? ”

“Ever see The Wire ?”

Wells shook his head.

“It’s great. You’d like it. You’re like McNulty, only less of a hound. So. Six-seven-three finds something big, gets the wrong people upset. ” Shafer trailed off.

“Doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“I never buy the big conspiracies. You know, half the time we can barely tie our shoes. And now we’re saying the SecDef or the President or the Pope is taking out these guys one by one? That they’re rubbing their hands together in the White House, whispering to each other, ‘First San Diego. Then New Orleans. They know too much. Kill them. All of them.’ Giggling. Bwah-hah-hah. ”

“The Russians,” Wells said.

“The Russians do enjoy their conspiracies. They might be crazy enough to kill our guys this way. But if Duto and Fred Whitby think it’s the Russians, why wouldn’t they tell us?”

Wells couldn’t think of an answer.

The jogger had reached them. She wore red shorts over her doughy white legs and a pale blue T-shirt with the University of Maryland terrapin logo. She kept her head down and avoided eye contact with them. Looking at her, Wells had a vague sense of déjà vu. He didn’t know why. Then he did. She looked like a younger version of Keith Robinson’s wife. Keith Edward Robinson, the CIA desk officer who’d spied for China and then fled for parts unknown, leaving his alcoholic wife, Janice, behind. Wells had met Janice only once, in a house that stank of hopelessness.

“You like her? Didn’t think she was your type,” Shafer said.

“She makes me think of Janice Robinson.”

“Keith’s wife?” Shafer looked again. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Never found that guy.”

“No, we didn’t. Probably buried in some jungle. He didn’t strike me as having much candle left. Though some of these guys, they last longer than you think. Keep pouring out misery. On themselves and everyone else. You know she quit drinking, right? Janice. Just in time, too. She had about two ounces of liver left.”

“Good for her.”

“Maybe one day he’ll send her a postcard, give us a chance to pay him a visit. No statute of limitations on what he did.”

“He got to be got, right, Ellis?”

“Exactly right. So. Assuming we’re out of wild theories. Let’s go back to the beginning. Say it’s a jihadi op.”

“Tell me how they got the members of the squad.”

“Bad opsec”—operational security. “Somebody in Poland found a flight manifest, didn’t put it in a burn bag like he was supposed to. Or the guy they released, Zumari, he knew where they were operating, and after he got out, he went back and bribed somebody there. Or the Berlin prosecutor’s office hates the agency and leaked the names.”

“I still don’t see it,” Wells said. “But if you got the names, you could do it. And maybe this is how you would. One at a time. Quietly. Once you’ve killed three or four, you lift the veil, go public with it. Shove it in our faces. Revenge on the American torture squad.”

“Makes as much sense as anything else,” Shafer said.

“How do we find out if the names leaked?”

“We don’t,” Shafer said. “That’s the FBI’s job. I’m going to work on Duto, push him to open the records. Even if he can’t give us the interrogation records, we’ve got to get more on the detainees. Names, nationalities, what we’re holding them for. And I’m going to talk to Brant Murphy.”

“The guy who still works for us.”

“Yes. At CTC”—the agency’s Counterterrorist Center.

“What’s that leave for me?”

“You’re going to do what Duto said. Go to Cairo to find Alaa Zumari. An encore performance. John Wells, back to his roots, undercover as a jihadi. For one night only. Acoustic. It’ll be fun.”

“And how do I get to him if the muk ”—short for mukhabarat, the Arabic word for secret police—“can’t? I got it. I’ll ask Khadri and the rest of my buddies for references. Only they’re all dead. I killed them, remember?”

Though in truth, Shafer was right. Wells wanted to go, to be undercover again, to speak Arabic, to hear the midday call to prayer roll through dusty streets.

“As it happens, I’ve got an idea on that.”

The security at the big Egyptian hotels seemed good. It wasn’t. At the Intercontinental, a blocky pink tower on the Nile, a low gate protected the front driveway, and a bomb-sniffing German shepherd nosed around every car. But a determined bomber could have plowed through the gate, Wells saw. The guards had AKs and pistols, but they didn’t wear bulletproof vests. Wells wondered if the men he hoped to meet on this trip had made similar calculations.

Since the mid-1990s, dozens of terrorist attacks had hit Egypt, killing hundreds of tourists. Still, Americans and Europeans came here every day to gawk at the pyramids and visit the splendid tombs near Luxor. Wells wondered if they understood the resentments in the giant city around them.

Wells reached the Intercontinental’s front doors and gave up his cell phone to pass through the hotel’s metal detector. Inside, the lobby was air-conditioned, with a pianist playing at a black baby grand, its elegance oddly disconnected from Cairo’s dirt and noise.

At the reception desk, Wells handed over his newly minted passport, which proclaimed him William Anthony Barber, forty-one, of Plano, Texas.

“Mr. Barber. You will be with us for a week.”

“You got it, sweetheart.”

The receptionist tapped on her computer, handed over his passport and keycard. “Room 2218. Please enjoy your stay in Cairo.”

“Of course.”

Room 2218 had two queen beds and a pleasant view of the luxury hotels and apartment buildings along the banks of the Nile. Feluccas, single-masted Egyptian sailboats that catered to the tourist trade, puttered along the water, along with open-air cruisers that ferried tourists and even some native Cairenes between the riverbanks. Wells watched for a while and then pulled the curtains and closed his eyes. When he left this room again, the mission would begin in earnest.

HE SLEPT WITHOUT DREAMING and woke dry-mouthed but refreshed. In the bathroom, he stripped. A day earlier, at Langley, he’d taped a plastic bag to the back of his thigh. Now he pulled it off, trying not to take his leg hair with it. He showered and scrubbed, and when he was done, he looked himself up and down in the bathroom mirror. Despite the wounds he’d suffered on his missions, age had been kind to him. Being free to work out for hours every day helped, too. Only actors, pro athletes, and spies, perfect narcissists all, could devote so much time to their bodies. And, of course, he didn’t have a wife or family or kids to distract him. Though that wasn’t entirely true. Wells closed his eyes. His boy was a ghost to him. When this mission was done, he would go to Montana and insist on seeing Evan, whatever his ex-wife said. It was time.